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Monday,
January 7, 2002, Chandigarh, India   
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The General’s PR drama Killed before fighting a war
Campaign against terrorism Muslims must not feel isolated in India K.F. Rustamji The worst feature of the present “war” against terrorism is the anti-Muslim feeling that it has aroused. Politicians of the ruling party must make sure that all their invectives against Pakistan for sending jehadis to us do not create a feeling against the Muslims of India. |
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Of government files
The law, the law-makers and terrorism
1969, Economics:
FRISCH & TINBERGEN
Gene therapy can help victims of Parkinson’s disease
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The General’s PR drama Summit meetings are a dull affair. For the leaders it is an opportunity to smile into the TV cameras; for the Foreign Ministers a few weeks of work; and for the bureaucrats a few months of nimble thinking and scripting the proceedings to the last detail. Everybody knows what to expect but reacts as though some momentous development is unfolding. The audaciously flamboyant General Pervez Musharraf single-handedly rewrote the script and enlivened the proceedings, if only for a fraction of a minute. At the close of his address at the inaugural session he pledged to offer a sincere and genuine handshake of peace with India and then did something out of the diplomatic book by walking up to Prime Minister Vajpayee and shaking hands. As drama it was electric as the two rounds of applause tended to show. This may be because of two reasons. SAARC members are unhappy that the Indo-Pakistan feud has crippled the group’s progress. Two, any promise to fight terrorism and usher in peace evokes a warm and spontaneous response. Barring the Maldives, all countries are rocked by terrorism or face possible terrorist attacks. The final declaration highlights this point, and calls for collective efforts to stamp out terrorism and shut out financial support. The General’s grand gesture, which clearly surprised the Indian Prime Minister, is for the consumption of the international community and is thus cynical. While committing himself to combating terrorism, he had gone back to his weird distinction of terrorism per se and legitimate resistance and freedom struggle, meaning thereby that what his government is supporting in the Kashmir valley is in the cause of freedom. He did not explain what his country’s role was in Afghanistan. Beyond the applause for a few seconds the weary audience did not even take notice of the General’s two other points. One, he wanted bilateral disputes to be discussed at SAARC summits and the members said no. He pleaded that the summit should go on even if one or the other member-country stays away. This was an allusion to India’s disinclination to be present which stalled the meeting for three years. Again, the summit rejected it. Despite the momentary unsettling caused by General Musharraf’s grandstand, India can still build on the Kathmandu declaration. It can work vigorously for removing the seeming obstacles in inviting investment in key areas. All SAARC countries desire this to remove poverty and create jobs. It is not fashionable to suggest this, but India can separate its anti-terrorism campaign from economic cooperation as it has successfully done in the case of Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bangladesh. This is a very weak point of Pakistan and if this country persists with it, the neighbour can be isolated. That should be the post-SAARC summit priority. |
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Killed before fighting a war While in the USA the death of even a single soldier forces the entire defence set-up to work overtime to find out the factors behind the tragedy for immediate corrective measures, in India the situation is entirely different and shameful. We take everything in a casual manner even when human lives are at stake. Extreme carefulness at every stage in the laying of landmines in the border areas, an exercise being undertaken by the country’s armed forces in view of the fast gathering war clouds in the subcontinent, could have most probably saved the 21 lives, 14 of them soldiers, lost on Saturday in Mahwa village in Amritsar district. One fails to understand why lessons were not learnt from two related incidents in the recent past — the death of four Army personnel while laying landmines on December 25 in Sriganganagar district in Rajasthan and of 10 soldiers in the Longewala area? Why were maximum precautions not maintained? The Mahwa tragedy occurred when two Army vehicles parked near a dump of ammunition were driven over landmines while making way for a private truck engaged by the Army. Why were landmines left unnoticed in an area where there was movement of trucks? Somebody from among the Army personnel should have visualised that even a small mistake in such a situation could prove fatal for those engaged in the unloading of the deadly ammunition. The nation cannot tolerate the indifferent behaviour of the people who are supposed to be always alert. Why should our soldiers or anybody else die due to war-related causes even when the feared military conflict is still in the air? Retired army officers believe that the lack of adequate training is the single most important factor that is taking its toll. The officers who are assigned the duty of imparting the necessary drill to the Army personnel recruited for handling weapons like landmines become casual when they are frequently engaged in the tasks which are not their cup of tea. Among such jobs are counter-insurgency and anti-terrorism operations. The Army must be kept free of these duties so that its preparedness does not suffer and it can concentrate on the most essential training aspect. There is, in fact, need to raise forces specifically for handling counter-insurgency situations and the problems caused by the unending menace of terrorism. India’s belligerent neighbour — Pakistan — is giving it no respite from the proxy war launched in Jammu and Kashmir. It is aimed at not only misleading the world community by calling the activities of Pakistan-trained terrorists as “freedom struggle” but also at wasting the precious resources and energy of India’s armed forces which could have been otherwise used for regularly upgrading its fighting machine. There is also the possibility of the troops developing the dangerous fatigue syndrome. Thus, it has become unavoidable to find a wayout so that the armed forces are not engaged in any task other than the one for which they have been raised — defending the country’s borders. The incidents involving anti-personnel and other landmines have pointed to the symptoms of the disease fast spreading in India’s defence network. The nation must wake up before it is too late. |
Campaign against terrorism The worst feature of the present “war” against terrorism is the anti-Muslim feeling that it has aroused. Politicians of the ruling party must make sure that all their invectives against Pakistan for sending jehadis to us do not create a feeling against the Muslims of India. Let us give them credit that they have reacted against events in Afghanistan in the right way. In fact, the statements of Muslim leaders and articles in prominent journals have been critical of the misuse of religion that has been attempted by Osama bin Laden and his cohorts. Indian Muslims have been an example to the world. When I saw the second plane crash into the World Trade Center in a burst of red flame, on TV in Toronto, my first thought was “what effect will it have on the Muslims who reside in America as citizens of that nation?” “The first taxi driver in Toronto whom I talked to gave me an answer, “They never see what effect it will have on small people like us. “Back in India, I saw gradual hardening of attitudes against Muslims, the chance remark in conversations being that “they are all like that”, “Islam wants jehad” etc. The critical attitude of some towards the operations in Afghanistan reflected only the viewpoint of individuals and was shared by many who hated war. How do we guard against the animus against Muslims that is creeping into Indian society? Do we realise how wrong it is? How contrary to our secular outlook? How unfair and how damaging it can be to our democracy? We must not allow it to pass unnoticed. Today people are apt to forget the part Muslims played in the movement for freedom. The cellular jail in the Andamans bears the names of scores of them, who sacrificed their all for freedom. How many whom we knew as friends went to jail and participated in the civil disobedience movement on Gandhiji’s call. Few people today could have heard the speeches of Maulana Azad. What a powerful speaker he was, and how perfect he was in his thinking and his language. His every word carried a true message. We disregarded it at our cost. I recall several conversations with him, with admiration for his greatness, and regret that he has never been brought into our textbooks. Can I ever forget the brief interview that I had with Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan when he came to Delhi some time ago. My son, Cyrus, then 10, and I went to see him. Khan Saheb spoke to Cyrus affectionately and gave him an apple that was on the table. He spoke briefly with me, lamenting the changes that had occurred in India and Pakistan. I recalled the days of the Khudai Khidmatgars and their strong attachment to Mahatma Gandhi. While talking to him I began to realise why they called him the Frontier Gandhi. There was a remarkable resemblance. To this day the Pathans feel that we let them down in Partition. In truth, we betrayed them in our hurry to get Independence. When I look back at my life, I think of the number of Muslim friends who made life easier and better. In college one of my best friends was Mohammad Akbar, who shared a bench with me in the chemistry practical and made a whole period bearable with his amusing sallies. In service my best friend was Maqbool Niaz (ICS), a typical product of Lahore, with super exuberance and a flair for poetry and a passion for women. In Pakistan he rose rapidly, but was killed in an air crash. I knew a lot of military officers who were models of uprightness and courage; the foremost in gallantry was Subedar Abdul Hamid, who got the Param Veer Chakra award. This is the real testing time for the Muslim leadership in India. We need people like Rafiq Zakaria, Javed Akhtar, Asghar Ali Engineer, Air Marshall Latif (retd) and Bilkis Latif of Hyderabad and Shabana Azmi, that brave woman and exquisite artiste. Perhaps, it is difficult for true leaders to emerge as long as priests like the Shahi Imam of Delhi pontificate on politics. I wonder what they know. What is their understanding of modern trends, technologies and development? They make use of the rostrum which religion provides to force their views on a simple people. It is clerics posing as leaders who have driven thousands of young men of Pakistan to their death in Afghanistan. One of the clerics returned, and preferred to go to jail rather than face the wrath of the families he had ruined in Pakistan. The late Sheikh Abdullah, his son Farooq and grandson Omar (equally charismatic) have rendered great service to the nation, particularly to the cause of secularism in India. Farooq needs to be brought to the Centre if he can be spared from J&K, to be the spokesman and leader of Indian Muslims. He certainly has the capacity to fill that role with distinction. Saiyid Hamid, former Vice-Chancellor of Aligarh Muslim University, is one of those clear-sighted leaders who has done good to the nation for years. J.N. Quereishi, who retired as Chairman, UPSC, would make a first class Ambassador or Governor. I think the placement of Muslims in key positions heeds special attention of the government at the Centre and in the states. Among the others, Dr A.P.J Abdul Kalam is one of the finest scientists this country has ever produced. Salman Khurshid and Ghulam Nanavaty are notables. Even MA Jinnah served the nation with great discernment for almost two-thirds of his life. Zakir Hussain and the “Gharanas” that have kept classical music alive, M.J. Akbar, a gifted writer, the two Pataudis of cricket, and Azharuddin, and judges like MA Somjee, K.A. Somjee and M.C. Chagla who have adorned the highest courts of the land, A.R. Rehman has become an international celebrity. If we look back, there was Hakim Ajmal Khan and a number of partriots of the finest type. If we look at the present, we have new leaders emerging like Farzana, the devoted wife of the late Behram Contractor (Busybee). She is attracting the young with her verve and spirit. Or take MF Hussain, the painter; the whole world knows him. Muslims of India have made their mark in every field, and we are proud of them. One distressing feature of cultural life in India today is that there is little interaction between the communities, less and less with Muslims and the rest of the population. Years ago when there were more Muslims in service and in the armed forces, most of us had friends whom we used to meet
regularly. Earlier still, there were opportunities of meeting at the club in British days. We made friends, talked about current affairs and found how close we were in our views. Now we seldom meet. Social circles are marked out by community and caste, and still we pride ourselves on our pluralistic democracy and the equality which it provides. It is the television and radio and the media in general that now have the responsibility of keeping us in touch with each other. Cinema and the Urdu language have rendered great service to us all these years. In fact, the part that cinema stars and directors and producers have played in uniting us has never been properly acknowledged. Can we ever forget Dilip Kumar, Madhubala, Meena Kumari, Salman Khan or Aamir Khan and that saucy number “Aati Kya Khandala”. The greatest harm to Islam has been done by the madarsas of Pakistan, the jehad factories that turned out men to die for bigots, not to life for Islam. Many of those from the 7,000 or so madarsas of Pakistan have lost their lives in a futile bid to defend the Taliban. Credible writers have described the education in these suicide schools and the way they run on grants from wealthy citizens who have to bear the brunt of religious extortion. In truth, the whole system of education devised by Osama’s supporters has taken the Muslims away from the field of science and development. In Britain, Muslim discontent with unemployment has been turned into pro-Taliban sentiment. In India, too, there is the danger of some clerics misleading young men into extremist activities. Unfortunately, Muslim masses are still unaware of the damage that has been done to them throughout the world by Osama bin Laden and his cohorts of hate. Still worse is the confrontation on the border which serves the purpose, both in India and Pakistan, of diverting attention from the reality. Let us be warned, however, that moving forces to the border can lead to a sudden skirmish by some hotheaded commander which can escalate into a war which nobody wants. Fortunately, there are officers on both sides in the army who realise the dangers in a conflict without reason. It is a real test of our democracy to keep the Muslims content and secure, and not to alienate them with the talk of separateness and distrust. They have served our democracy well. We must not shock them with another Ayodhya episode, or give prominence in the media to fringe elements who rave to hurt Muslim sentiments. The need of the hour is to strengthen the unifying forces in the country. |
Of government files The government functions for public good and therefore should always be in a position to justify every action in light of public interest. The watchdog of that interest in the government is a file. A file is not a bundle of papers. It is a system, a system of record maintenance, including recording the process of decision-making that reflects the reasonable transparency in arriving at the decision. Once I was in workshop comprising mostly industrialists and when I told them about this system, one of them rose and said: “Three cheers for transparency if there is one and four cheers for decision, if there is ever a decision.” The entire gathering burst into laughter and I had to make do with the argument that they were right to some extent and file could be baptised as “snail-paced” or “funeral-march” or “dog-trot”. Still it was the most live and kicking phenomenon of an office. Even the computer-quake could not make a dent on its proud flesh. The Curzonian expression, “thousands of pages, occupying hundreds of hours of valuable time, are written by score of officers, to the obfuscation of their official work” stood pat even today, the year by which we ought to have been working in a paperless office. There is no doubt that the files hold sway over the government officials. They “eat file, drink file and sleep file” — often in cricket ground they indulge in serious file-talks and in office, cricket-chat. I remember the horrid days when my wife developed morning sickness. Horrid, because it happened after “hum do, hamare do”. We consulted the doctors. After diagnostic rituals, it was disclosed that Mrs Joshi had developed allergy to the “sweet smelling stale papers of the files” that I used to carry home. Since then files were treated like concubines by my better half and poor I as battered half because I was forced to unburden the entire responsibility that the government had so gratefully bestowed upon me by sitting late in the office — sans home made evening snacks and tea. It is little too thick for me to believe that the files move only with the help of professional “file-pushers”. I was back in Shimla having served in a moffusil town for three years. One day I received intimation from the office of the PWD of that town that the plumbing line of my erstwhile quarter was checked recently and all was O.K. That reminded me that I had sent an application to that office about four years back for setting right the leaking plumbing line. Receiving no quick response from them, I had got it repaired by a private contractor. The reply confirmed my viewpoint that the files do move. And that too faster than the seven-year itch, because I got the reply in four years’ time. Here I am tempted to write QED, the expression that I used to write after proving a geometrical theorem in my school days. Sometimes, however, the real problem gets stuck and it was Curzon again who had given the seeker the right mantra, “every question that comes along either sinks in or is sucked down; and unless you stick a key with a label over the spot at which it disappeared (called “Flag” in officialese), and from time to time go out and dig the relics, you will never see anything again.” There was one assistant whose surname was “Justa”, Whosoever visited him he would hear, “Don’t worry about your case. It has come to the right person. Justa is for justice.” But the files from his desk hardly used to move. When I pointed out the quagmire of files in his desk, his reply was: “Never do today what you can do tomorrow. Something may occur to make you regret your premature action. That is the demand of justice”. |
The law, the law-makers and terrorism POTO and BALCO. More than all else in the universe of law on the sub-continent, these two words, both evocative and contentious, dominated the year that has gone by. If BALCO or the jurisprudence of disinvestment hogged the headlines in the first half of 2001, POTO or the jurisprudence of terror occupied the nation’s consciousness in the second. And even as the Supreme Court finally rang the curtain down on BALCO on December 10, with a verdict whose intellectual quality leaves much to be desired, the December 13 attack on Parliament reopened but at the same time widened the POTO debate beyond the frontiers of the law. From waging war over POTO, the nation has moved on to debating if, and if yes, how, to wage war against Pakistan over terrorism in a world whose legal, diplomatic and military benchmarks have changed suddenly and dramatically after September 11. For all the unspeakable crimes against humanity that he has committed, and for which he is now wanted, dead or alive, India cannot thank Osama bin Laden enough for achieving in less than two hours what the entire might of the Indian state — from Jawaharlal Nehru to Indira Gandhi to Atal Behari Vajpayee — could not accomplish over more than five decades. The shattering of the naive American faith in the absolutism of human rights, the staple diet of Pax Americana before September 11. “This was the bloodiest day on American soil since our Civil War,” wrote senior editor Nancy Gibbs in a special September 11 issue of the Time magazine, the first 30 pages of which were just photographs of the terror that had struck America. “Every city catalogued its targets,” she said, and “residents looked at their skylines, wondering if they would be different in the morning. The Sears Tower in Chicago was evacuated, as were colleges and museums. Disney World shut down, and Major League Baseball cancelled its games, and nuclear power plants went on top security status; the Hoover Dam and the Mall of America shut down, and Independence Hall in Philadelphia, and Mount Rushmore.” “It was as though (she reflected) someone had taken a huge brush and painted a bull’s eye around every place Americans gather, every icon we revere, every service we depend on, and vowed to take them out or shut them down, or force us to do it ourselves.” The September 11 attack, she concluded several pages later, “will become a defining reference point for our culture and imagination, a question of before and after, safe and scarred.” And since the culture and imagination of the United States of America is the measure of the “justice, equity and good conscience” of the world — to use an expression so familiar to Indian lawyers and historians — international law after September 11 is quite a different ball game than international law before it. “Terrorism is a serious problem but not a useful legal concept” — this observation by Prof Louis Henkin, a leading American scholar, made in 1995 in an otherwise highly impressive work based on his lectures at the Hague Academy of International Law, would sound incredible today to audiences both at home and around the globe. Just two years after Henkin wrote these words, K.P.S. Gill, India’s leading star in the battle against terrorism, analysed the “fatal flaw in the liberal mind” in his “Punjab: The Knights of Falsehood”, a book as bold in print as its author was on the ground. “Having established in structure and form (although seldom in substance,” says Gill, “a system of governance that corresponds to its conception of democracy, it (the liberal mind) feels that nothing more needs to be done.” “The ‘truths’ of the liberal ideology,” says Gill, sarcasm at its best, “are, as the American Declaration on the Rights of Man expresses it, self evident. They require no proof, no reiteration, and no defence, certainly no defence by force of arms. Once democracy (or even the ritual of quinquennial elections) is established, according to liberal mythology, the mythical ‘invisible hand’ keeps everything in place; the ‘superior wisdom of the masses’ ensures order and justice.” This is just so much rubbish, he says. “Truth does not triumph unless it has champions to propound it, unless it has armies to defend it.” Had KPS Gill been an American, these words would by now have found pride of place in every leading manual on political science, at least after September 11. It is only in the Third World, and in India in particular, that police officers are always looked down upon in theory while being sought after in practice. The fact is, writes Gill, that terrorism and its executioners have their own agenda, entirely independent of the popular will, of democratic considerations or institutions, or of the aspirations and desires of the community they claim to represent. And they are defeated not by the operation of some mystical force called popular will but by the force of arms. The people themselves have no defence against them, other than the power they confer on those who govern on their part. It is the security forces of the state and of the nation who bear the burden of the actual responsibility for the war against terror and anarchy. Nowhere was this more evident than in the December 13 attack on Parliament, when half a dozen faceless members of the security forces laid down their lives to save the entire Indian political class from a massacre which, had it materialised, would have left India headless for several generations. Absent these men and women of the security forces, not one of the hundreds of MPs holed up inside nor any of the “steel-framed” bureaucrats bred by Macaulay to rule India nor even their Lordships of the Supreme Court holding court a few miles away could do anything to protect themselves, the rule of law or the nation’s freedom and sovereignty whose standard-bearers they are. “The first question,” said the tallest of all legal historians, F.W. Maitland, in his lectures at Cambridge delivered in 1887-88 and published 20 years later, “which a student of modern jurisprudence is likely to ask on turning to consider a political constitution is, Where is sovereignty?” Ever since the Middle Ages, he said, there have been three claimants for sovereignty: one, the king; two, Parliament (or the “king in Parliament”, to employ the correct constitutional usage); and, three, the law — in that historical order. It requires no Maitland, of course, to tell us of the ultimate victory of the third, the law, and of how the principle of supremacy of the law, first stated forcibly and at considerable personal risk by Chief Justice Coke in the 17th century, came to be repeated by generation after generation of judges the world over, a process which is still with us. Still with us, I said, but not quite. For at least after December 13 it would be vain to pretend that the supremacy of the law is anything more than an abstraction. An abstraction that can be punctured any moment, and rather rudely, by gunfire and gore. To those valiant police officers of Punjab, Delhi, Kashmir and beyond who stand outside and defend democracy daily against terror as the rest of us pass laws in the security of our legislatures and judgement in the security of our courtrooms, my thanksgiving in the year of grace 2002. |
Gene therapy can help victims of Parkinson’s disease People suffering from Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s disease may be assured of a quality life through genetic therapy, an expert on genetics told the Indian Science Congress (ISC), in Lucknow. “The gene therapy can be successful either by injecting the DNA or substituting the desired gene in viruses after removing the diseased component from it,” Mr Inder M. Verma, a genetic expert from the USA, said. Highlighting the need to learn more on how the gene works, Mr Verma said: “We have reached a point where biology of yesteryear appears dominating the subject of gene therapy.” Dr G. Padmnabhan of the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, while referring to the availability of complete genome sequences of human beings, said it has created new opportunities in treatment and diagnosis of AIDS. “We have on-going functional genomic programmes for the development of recombinant and DNA vaccines of TB, HIV, rabies and malaria,” he said, adding that significant progress had been made in the research work. Dr SS Agarwal of the Tata Memorial Centre, Mumbai, said with the deciphering of human genome, more accurate prediction of the risk for disease and response to treatment may become a reality in the near future.
PTI Tea helps prevent cancer, arthritis: study Tea, an antidote for environmentally induced diseases, decreases the harmful effect of tobacco and could help prevent tooth decay and diseases like cancer, arthritis, tumours, diabetes and certain skin infections, a panel discussion at the Indian Science Congress in Lucknow felt. Recent researches have proved that tea which contained vitamins, flavonoids, proteins, poly-saccharides and poly-phenols, helps in absorbing fats, provides self-resistance and promotes blood circulation in a controlled way, the discussion on “environment and health” said. According to a research paper “Drinking of the millennium tea” presented by a group of researchers led by Dr Hasan Mukhtar, tea has the potential of giving quality to human health. The session, chaired by an eminent scientist and former Director of Central Drug Research Institute (CDRI), Prof B.N. Dhawan, said the non-alcoholic beverage makes the defence system of the body strong.
PTI
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To attempt to change the character of a wicked man by being kind to him is like trying to make a hog clean. It is no use to mix water with milk and offer the same to an eagle, for the eagle knows the secret of separating the milk from the water. This is symbolical of the wicked. The venom of a scorpion is to be found in its tail, that of a fly in its head, that of a servant in its fangs; but the venom of a wicked man is to be found in all parts of his body. A wise man preserves an equal mind both in adversity and in prosperity. He allows himself neither to be crushed by the former nor elated by the latter. An intelligent man is he who knows when to speak and when to be silent, whose friendship is natural and sincere, and who never undertakes anything beyond his powers. Virtue is the best of friends, vice is the worst of enemies, disappointment is the most cruel of all illnesses, courage is the support of all. Just as the moon is the light of the night and the sun the light of the day, so are good children the light of their family. Flies look for ulcers, kings for war, wicked men for quarrels; but good men look only for peace. The virtuous man may be compared to a large leafy tree which, while, it is itself exposed to the heat of the sun, gives coolness and comfort to others by covering them with its shade. — Niti Shlokas Between you and me there lingers and 'it is I' which torments me. Ah! lift through mercy this 'It is I' from between us both. — Sufi al-Halla |
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